


Down By The Beach

by binz, shiplizard



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Bros Before Immortality, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Hawaii, Millennials All Grown Up, Offscreen character death, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:56:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/binz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiplizard/pseuds/shiplizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year: 2040. The place: Kaanapali, Maui. The occasion: the 30th annual IndieHouse amateur horror film fest. Chief ME Lucas Wahl is taking a well deserved vacation to showcase some of his amateur films and catch up with fellow horror nerds when he runs into an old, old friend. </p><p>Funny how Henry Morgan doesn't seem to have aged a day. </p><p>More importantly, though, he's a mess. Immortality's really cool, but friendship is more important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down By The Beach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smallearthcat (vamplover82)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vamplover82/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!

The IndieHouse filmfest is really only 25 percent a film fest. 30 percent tops. What it’s really is 75 percent an excuse to go somewhere fun for a long weekend, especially for the older hobbyists like Doctor Wahl. The young blood and the people who actually want to make a career out of this are the ones that need the spotlight; the weekend gory-ers with stable income are just here to fund it and get little participation trophies.

That's what Doctor Wahl tells himself when he slips out of the afternoon mixer early, anyway. It's not that he doesn't love people and doesn't want to catch up with other filmmakers, but he also really, really wants to see Hawai'i. Not just the resort-- it's a great resort-- but at least all of one island, two if he can swing it. He only tacked an extra week on to his long weekend, so he’s got to be a picky, and he's got a map of at least two dozen sites here on Maui alone he needs to see-- the rainforest from Jurassic Park (the original with Goldblum and Dern, not any of the recent awful remakes, hell no), three haunted graveyards, a whole mess of shipwrecks, abandoned railroad posts, and one ancient dock that just looked cool on the image crawl and turned out to be less than half an hour from the hotel.

Sorry, mixer; sorry, forumites. He'll catch them later.

It hits him again when he steps out of the resort lobby, from air conditioning to warm golden afternoon sunshine. He’s in Hawai’i. He’d always wanted to visit but just never made it, and here he is. Erin had wanted to come, had no interest in the blood splatter and zombie philosophy, never had done, but she’d been planning on spending the entire week on a surfboard until a high-priority something had come up at work and she was now spending a month in the Chicago office.

There are palm trees lining the street, green leaves large and swaying, he’s wearing shorts and sandals and is already sweating, and his phone tells him that in New York it’s snowing. There’s a thermometer on the side of the little convenience store beside the resort; it’s nearing thirty degrees, but just breezy enough to keep it from being sweltering and carry the scent of plumeria and sunscreen and ocean to him past the car exhaust and smell of baking concrete. Basically, it’s perfect.

He doesn’t even need to stop and try to convert from Fahrenheit to know how much nicer it is here exactly than in New York and calls it a victory. Working with body temperatures, he’d picked the switch up faster than a lot of people his age, and his niece hasn’t said as much, but he’s pretty sure she thinks it’s cool. Becoming the hip uncle by degrees, oh yeah.

He takes the inland trolley to the Lahaina stop, taking pictures half the time and frantically googling the other half, and hops off for the ten minute walk down to the coast. He remembers the app his niece ordered him to install, the one that combines the camera and the gps to take annotated shots, and switches over to that halfway through the walk. He knows he looks like the worst kind of tourist, eyes glued to his screen, but he loves it here and he wants to have proof it exists when he goes back to New York.

He passes an open-air flea market inside the gutted shell of a Barnes and Nobles as he works his way through the sprawling metropolis of Lahaina-- snap pic, annotate, set a reminder to go back because if there's a used book stall there he can buy a book at a B&N for the first time since they closed their last brick and mortar a decade ago.

Turns out he doesn't need the guide on his phone to get to Mala Ramp; there's lots of signage. Slightly disappointing, which is silly. It's not like he's the first person to go there. But you can at least pretend, when there's not one of those brown historic attraction plaques pointing directly at it.

He grabs a picture of the plaque; he'll write up something about that fake discovery sense later. Maybe there's a short film in it, too.

His ankle is starting to twinge where he broke it back in '35, and he knows he'll have to rest it; no manic energy is going to power him through muscle collapse.

Or, well, it could, and then he'd be out of commission for the whole film fest. Maybe back in his twenties he'd have risked it, but he passed the big five-oh two years ago and he's at peace with the limits of his body. Aging is just another kind of body horror, like he tells Erin.

He makes his way slowly down the parking lot to the beach access, and lets out a slow breath as he breaks through the thin line of trees and onto the coast.

It's gorgeous.

Everything's gorgeous here, but this is gorgeous in its own way-- the ruins of Mala Wharf are weathered concrete and bare metal, arched support pylons stained by rusty runoff from the twisted fence that bars it off, and clustered with barnacles and coral. It's lonely and beautiful; no families on the beach, no kids sneaking up to climb the warf to the rusted fence. There's another tourist sleeping in the shade; the faint salt breeze carries Wahl the smell of bourbon, and he's suddenly almost homesick.

There's a big dark shape in the water by one of the submerged pylons; he starts, and as he picks his way closer, careful of the big rocks near the edge of the structure and his bad ankle, he can make out the form of a diver. Two, poking their way around a cluster of corals, half hidden by seaweed that streams in and out with the waves.

He takes a picture. The surface of the water's too reflective to see anything, in the photo, so he annotates it too because he'll need to remember the dark forms in the shadows. It'd be perfect for something, he can feel it-- are the divers silent monsters, waiting? Or are they the victims in this scene, in danger from some darker thing, or an invisible monster hiding in the deep undertow? He'll let his brain chew on it quietly; the idea will pop into his head fully formed some three AM.

He also takes a picture of the rusty fence; it won't come out as nicely as the ones he found on the internet, but it'll be his, when he was here. He feels like he's being sucked out to sea and he's not even in the water.

He takes off his shoes and socks and perches on a fallen chunk of wharf, gingerly letting his feet down into the sea.

"Oh."

It's not warm like a bath, but it's warm; it soothes his twinging ankle and tugs at his legs.

"Wow," he says, to nobody, grinning. Just him, the drunk up the beach, and the divers. He can see a few surfers off the coast, some sailboats, but he's got the ruins to himself for the moment.

All he can hear is the white noise of the wind and waves. No gulls-- how weird is that, the smell of salt water and no screaming gulls?

His manic energy drains off; he rolls his pant legs up a little higher-- too late, they're already wet around the hems-- and leans forward, elbows on his legs. The motion of the seaweed is soothing; it's like watching a lava lamp except better, because there's a much higher chance of sea monsters.

The longer he sits still, the more he can see; he can make out fish swinging in and out of the wharf's shadow with the waves, little crabs crawling along. There's an eel poking its head out of a crack in the rocks under the nearest pylon, a flat ribbony shape with a wide mouth gaping open as it bobs back and forth.

Doctor Wahl pulls up his phone by instinct, but he can't get it to focus on the shadows; all he's getting is sunlight on the choppy water. He could try to take the picture underwater-- his niece has promised him over and over (and over and over with a more long-suffering eye-roll each time) that the hydrophobic silicon cladding is perfectly safe down to ten meters, twenty if you get it out fast enough. Kids these days have no idea. They wouldn’t even know what to do with a bag of rice. They don’t remember desperately jiggling USB cables to find that last sliver of uncorroded pin so that you could try to rescue your data.

Wahl's an old-timer, from a generation where dropping the phone in the toilet meant no more phone. He has his old fogey millennial superstitions about letting his electronics touch water.

Instead, he makes a note, thumbs pattering across his phone's onscreen:

MORAY MER PEOPLE  
JAWS  
TEETH  
CAMOUFLAGE  
MOR-PEOPLE?

He rolls the idea around, likes it a lot, and then slowly backs away from it; he should check in with the local filmmakers first, see if sexy/scary-mer people are a thing in island tradition. He doesn't want to go sparkly-vampire if this is Nosferatu's side of town. There'll be lots of young talent at the film-fest this weekend, he can pass the idea around, and if it takes maybe do a collaboration.

Wow, it's nice here.

He sits watching the fish and the divers and the various unidentified blurs in the deeper water feeling deeply at peace with everything, until the water's soaking his pants legs up to the calves. He stirs, and realizes his face and the crown of his head are hot; balding-spot sunburn would also put a damper in his weekend. Time to grab some shade.

The drunk's still there as he wanders back across the beach, shoes in hand; hasn't stirred. Doctor Wahl isn't Sherlock Holmes, but he did pick up tips from the best: he's already assessing the situation as approaches the shade trees. Sand not stirred up, leaves not broken; Jack Daniels Doe here laid down, assumed the fetal position, and stayed there. There are his socks neatly rolled inside good shoes, set up on a convenient flat rock. There’s a dark bottle lying against the curve of his stomach, mostly empty.

Wahl frowns. Neat shoes, neat socks, surroundings and clothes with no signs of tossing and turning to get comfortable. Neatly folded linen jacket being used as a pillow. Pants and linen shirt rumpled but not stained. Bare feet tanned, sharp tan lines visible in the shadow of the hems. It all adds up to-- habit. Not a tourist the morning after a beach-bender. This was a guy who still had the ability to wash his clothes but wore them until they were too dirty to wear, who came out here to be alone and drunk and did that often enough that he had a routine he followed without thinking even halfway down a bottle. Not good-- wow, and that is a very large bottle of whiskey,  no cap, so it had been lost or discarded, which suggests that a lot of the bottle had all gone down in one sitting....

He focuses on the man himself, not just the details. Young, he thinks, by the lack of gray in the tousled dark hair; a dark five o'clock shadow just visible on the edge of his face. His features are mostly hidden by the crook of his arm, but there's wetness wicking up his sleeves-- drool, but also a patch higher up near the eyes. Slim. Beautiful feet and hands. Breathing depressed but just barely visible.

"Hey, buddy," Doctor Wahl murmurs softly, crouching down next to him. "Bud? Sorry to wake you, but can you let me make sure you're not going to stop breathing here real fast?"

Nothing.

"Sorry," he says, and shakes the guy's shoulder. "I'm really sorry, but working with corpses is my day job, and this is supposed to be a vacation, so I'm going to need some signs of life. Come on."

The drunk moans softly and rolls over, pressing cracked lips together. There's sand sticking to his face-- around the mouth, in tracks under the eyes-- and Wahl's brain grinds to a halt.

He can still hear the surf, the waves pounding up against the old pylons, the wind in the palm leaves overhead. He can feel the sun on his ears, on the back of his head, suddenly so much hotter than before with his heart pounding and his ears ringing.

It can't be.

Can it?

But it couldn't be.

There's plastic surgery, and then there's this.

But it couldn't be.

It's been fifteen years.

Super soldier serum?

...no, Wahl, be realistic.

But it's Henry. Henry Morgan, his old boss, the assistant chief ME who taught him how to observe and fueled a few of his late night fantasies during his twenties. Henry Morgan, Henry 'I stopped by the day after your farewell dinner to get your forwarding address but you and your roommate were both gone like you'd never been there' Morgan, Henry 'leaving for an unspecified job on the west coast’ Morgan. Henry _hasn't aged a day since his farewell party_ Morgan. Doctor Henry _Did he ever actually age, am I imagining it or it or is he exactly the same as the day we met thirty years ago_ Morgan.

Henry shudders, clutching his stomach, and turns back onto his side.

"What?" he asks hoarsely, forcing his gummy eyes open. He peers up at Doctor Wahl with unfocused eyes, squinting miserably at the daylight. "Am I in your way? I beg your pardon--"

"Doctor Morgan," Wahl says gently. "Are you okay?"

The answer is crisp and perfectly enunciated: "I'm sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone else."

That's habit, Wahl realizes. Habit like the neatly folded jacket under his head and the shoes set carefully to the side.

He repeats: "Are you okay?"

"I-- yes." Henry moistens his lips, wide mouth going down at the corners-- it must hurt, and now he's got sand in his mouth. "I apologize. I didn't mean to be underfoot. I'll leave-- " He struggles to rise, digging his hands into the sand, sliding as he tries to lever himself upright.

"No, no, no," Wahl soothes, pressing him back into the sand. "I just wanted to make sure you're all right. Did you drink all of that today?" he taps the bottle.

Henry scowls. "That's none of your business," he says, very defiantly for someone who can't muster enough muscle tone to resist a gentle push.

He's speaking with a pronounced LA accent now, but it's way too late in the game for that. Wahl heard that big proper home-counties school of witchcraft and wizardry British sneaking out when he first woke up.

"Well, I'm a Medical Examiner, actually, so if you die of alcohol poisoning, it might be."

Henry squints at him, searching his face. He hasn't recognized Wahl but he knows he should, and he's doing a lousy job of hiding it. Wahl will give him the benefit of the doubt and put that down to the booze.

"I'm perfectly healthy, Doctor--?"

"Jackson." It just pops out, and Wahl decides to roll with it. "Peter Jackson. Pleased to meet you."

Henry does a double-take, frowning. His thoughts are almost visible. 'That's not right,' he's thinking. 'But if I let on that I know that, my bizarre and badly thought-out disguise will be ruined.' All right, Wahl may be injecting a little of his own color commentary into that.

Wahl lets him puzzle it out for another few seconds, and then lets him off the hook. "Sorry. I thought that's what we were doing, pretending to be someone else."

"I have no idea what you--"

"Doc," he cuts him off. "It's me. Whatever's going on, you know it'll be fine with me."

It stops Henry in his tracks. He frowns, searching Wahl's face as he slowly pushes himself to a sitting position. He's trying to focus. Wahl can see the moment that Henry sees past the thinning hair and the distinguished salt-and-pepper beard, past the fifteen years between then and now; his eyes widen and his face wrinkles into confusion, flickering between dismay and relief like he doesn't know if this is a good thing or the end of the world.

"It's okay, Doc," Wahl repeats, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Lucas?"

Wahl cracks half a smile.

"Lucas Wahl."

He nods, sticks his hands in pockets. "Nice to be remembered. You look like crap."

"I'm extremely hung over." The LA accent melts back off his voice, and he's mister BBC again-- just as he should be. "You look... well."

"Older. I'm pretty sure you mean older." Unlike some people here, is he right?

"I mean well," Henry says. "You've... done well?"

"Chief M.E."

"Well done." Henry blinks and sticks out a hand.

Drunk and sincere. Lucas will take it. He shakes Henry's hand lightly, and Henry looks down at their clasped hands like he's never done this before.

He keeps staring-- now at nothing, as Lucas retrieves his hand and sits down on the sand beside him.

"Aren't you going to ask?" Henry says finally.

"You didn't look like you wanted me to," Lucas tells him honestly.

Henry shrugs. "You may as well. There's... no point any longer, to pretending."

"Okay," he says, obligingly. "Why are you in Hawai'i drinking yourself to death on the beach?"

Another owlish blink, and another full-faced frown from Henry. "...I expected you to ask about the immortality."

"You're immortal--?" Lucas's turn to do the owl stare. O RLY, in the parlance of his well-spent youth.

Henry's face scrunches, and he winces at himself. "Damn."

"Never mind. Put a pin in that. Health issues first. What happened, Doc? Last I heard-- well, not that I've heard much-- you were headed to LA."

"Yes. Yes, I still live and work there. Although... I'm on something of a sabbatical."

"Okay," Lucas coaxes. "What... brought on the sabbatical, insert dubious quotation marks?"

One of Henry's hands starts to tremble, where it rests on his leg. "Abraham is dead."

"Oh, no," Lucas murmurs. He and Henry's roommate hadn't ever been the best of friends, but he knows how attached Henry had been to the older man. This must be recent-- Henry's liver wouldn't have survived too much of this routine he has going. (Or would it have? If immortality is on the table-- no, later.) But. Recent. Abe had been in his early eighties when Lucas saw him last, must have been scraping a hundred when it went--

It pangs in his heart. He'd liked the guy. Probably more than Abe ever liked him back, but he'd been fond of the old shopkeeper and he can see what it's doing to Henry. He doesn't ask any of the questions that come into his head-- was it fast, did it hurt, what did it. He doesn't say 'at least he had a good run', because he's not a sociopath.

Henry's gaze has drifted out to sea; his eyes fix on the far horizon, and he resolutely answers the questions Lucas would never have asked. "He was ninety-eight. Renal failure, in the end. You know as well as I what begins to happen to a body with age. There was no preceding illness, no bacterial or viral trigger. He had lost mobility over the years, his eyesight was all but gone, but he had never lost his spirit, his wit. One day he was chatting to me about the news, the next he was... ill."

A shaking breath. Lucas holds up a hand to stop the flow of words; Henry ignores him, forges on with a voice getting less steady by the word. "It devolved very rapidly. There was. There was nothing that could be done, only palliative care available and even that so limited. The end could only be postponed. And he. Chose not to--"

He chokes on the next word, makes a sound half-cough and half-sob, and folds forward.

Lucas scrambles to his side, gripping his shoulders in a way he hopes desperately is reassuring. He can hear when the tone of Henry's sobbing changes, feel the stiffness in his chest, and he's ready to help Henry onto his knees as his tortured body pumps the whiskey back up his throat and he retches into the sand.

God, it smells bad, and it's all bile and no solids. Henry hasn't eaten today-- or since the last time he vomited and neither of those are good options. Lucas doesn't have a handkerchief, not even a disposable pack of towels, and all he can do is help Henry scrub his hands with sand after he wipes his mouth.

"I don't know how to die," Henry whispers, covering his face with his hand. "Not in any lasting way. I can't... die. Only watch others."

"Henry--"

"Time clouds the memories but not enough. I still remember-- how small he was, when Abigail set him in my arms. His first word, his first steps-- as if it was no time at all. How could it have been so many years? It feels as if it went by so fast," Henry moans.

Understanding dawns, but it's a crappy, crappy dawn. Lucas struggles with the disjoint between what he remembers--peppery old Abe, handsome younger Henry-- and the picture that's being painted now. But there'd always been a disjoint, hadn't there? There'd always been a strange, affectionate off-kilter thing about them, the more he got to know them, the more time he spent around them, something rubbing against the grain in the way Abe acted around Henry, the way Henry acted around Abe....

“You’re his dad,” Lucas whispers, and Henry’s face contorts into fresh pain. The nod, a little jerk of Henry’s head that looks it was tortured out of him, is an unnecessary confirmation.

Christ. Of course Abe was his son, how could Lucas not have seen it? The whole thing snaps into focus, all the mysteries and loose ends resolving themselves in this new context.

"Oh, Henry." Lucas wraps his arms around Henry, lets Henry's head fall against his shoulder, and this shirt's going to need a wash but that's so far from being a top priority right now. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

Henry’s apparently given up on that gold-star-you-tried attempt to be discrete: he’s sobbing words into Lucas’s shirt, half-understandable misery, something to do with the paperwork about Abe’s death and not being able to speak at the funeral and nobody understanding what an amazing kid Abe had been.

“I’m sorry,” Lucas murmurs into the pauses when Henry’s throat is too tight to make syllables. He means it, too. Sorry for losing his kid. Sorry for not having anyone to tell. Sorry that Henry’s apparently so alone that he came to the most beautiful place Lucas has ever seen to drink himself into a stupor instead of turning to someone who cared. Sorry for the years Lucas hasn’t been there irritating Henry into remembering he’s got friends.

“My head hurts,” Henry whimpers, when he’s run himself out of anything else to say.

“I bet, bud,” Lucas murmurs, rubbing his back gently. That throat sounds awful too. “You staying nearby?”

A tiny nod. “I’m renting a small cottage. Up away from the coast.”

“You got headache stuff there?”

“Only the hair of the proverbial dog, I’m afraid.”

“Yikes, Henry. You need to take care of yourself.”

“I know. This isn’t what Abraham would have wanted,” he rasps. “But.” He swallows convulsively around the word.

“But nothing, Doc,” Lucas tells him firmly. “We’re going into town for some antacids and aspirin, and I bet you need some groceries. You’re going to have a real dinner and then you’re going to get some sleep, okay?”

“Lucas, you don’t have to do this--”

“Nope. Sorry. Totally do. No arguments: you have to respect those who look like your elders.”

Henry laughs weakly. “I am. Very drunk,” he says, after a pause, swallowing dryly. “I always say too much when I drink. That’s why I stopped.” His face turns miserable again, and Lucas grips his arm carefully, pulling them both up to their feet.

Henry sways a little, going pale under his tan, and Lucas keeps a tight grip on him until he stops looking like he just got off the Cyclone Chunk-o-Spin quarter hour special run.

“You just be sick again if you need to, okay,” he says. “If it wants out, let it out.” It’s no wonder his stomach’s turning itself inside out. When was the last time he ate anything? Anything other than horrifying large quantities of alcohol.

Lucas runs through what he has in his hotel room. Leftovers from last night-- probably not. Pineapple. Definitely not. Coffee-- maybe, after Henry’s had some actual solid food. Half of a bag of M&Ms... maybe. But there’s the convenience shop just past the resort, not to mention two really good restaurants and room service. They would probably bring him flat ginger ale and plain crackers, if he asked.

“...Shoes.” Henry says.

‘Don’t worry about them,’ Lucas almost says. ‘They can be cleaned or thrown out.’ But then he realizes Henry’s not worried about ruining his shoes, he’s looking over at his own, still tucked tidily away in his shady collapsing spot. “Right. Okay, no worries, c’mon. You can sit over there, I’ll get them.”

They maneuver over to the ramp from the parking lot. It takes a while. Dry sand isn’t the soundest thing to be walking on anyway, and Henry’s none too steady. He’s shorter than Lucas and a slim guy, hasn’t gained some respectable middle-aged belly weight like Lucas has, along with all the grey hairs and wrinkles he didn’t get, but he’s still pretty heavy, and by the time he folds down into a sitting slump on the ramp Lucas’s ankle and back are having a twinge-off.  

“Stay here,” Lucas says, just in case it’s somehow all been a lure and now that the hard part’s over Henry’s going to leap to his feet and sprint away. For his part Henry’s clinging to the side of the ramp and looks a lot like the world just ended, and totally isn’t going anywhere. Lucas drops his volume, and can’t help how his voice comes out a little gentler. “I’m going to be right back, okay?”

He fetches Henry’s shoes and jacket, shaking out the sand and the creases the best he can. Henry hasn’t moved when he returns, but rallies himself as Lucas gets closer and reaches out for his shoes.

It’s an exercise in painful self-restraint for Lucas, and probably just pain for Henry, but Henry manages to get his socks on and shoves his feet in shoes eventually. Eventually. There’s a little retching and he’s breathing like he just sprinted up a few flights of stairs, but he gets them on without help and Lucas knows how much of a victory that can be. Although, trying to remember back that far is alarming. And he’s pretty sure young, dumb university him just would have stuck his socks in his pockets and been done with it.

Lucas looks down at his phone and flicks through his messages for a while to let Henry struggle without an audience and recover. He pulls up the taxi app and hey, seven minutes ETA? Done. He’s not going to force Henry on the trolley. Plus they both need showers and other people don’t need to sit next to that.

The driver doesn’t bat an eyebrow at either of them; drunk tourists have to be at least, like, ten percent of her income, though she keeps a wary eye on Henry. Lucas asks her to stop at the convenience mart in the retail strip, and runs in to grab a toothbrush, a bottle of Pepto, and the most serious headache meds they have. As an afterthought, sunscreen from the stand right next to the checkout line. It’s not busy, fortunately; there’s an open auto-teller right away, and he’s out in five minutes.

The driver looks slightly less suspicious of him when he gets back. Either Henry confirmed that they knew each other or she just doesn’t expect predators to buy groceries during a con.

“Card on file?” she asks Lucas, stopping in front of the resort doors.

“Yeah. Oh, wait, crap, it’s expired.”

“Let me,” Henry murmurs, and fishes out his wallet sluggishly. “I’m already putting you out.”

“Henry, you’re not putting me out--” but he lets Henry withdraw a plastic card from his wallet, and of course he still carries his physical cards, tapping it gingerly on the phone the driver holds back as if he thinks the pay app won’t read the chip if he doesn’t actually touch the screen somehow.

“Thanks,” he says, and the driver gives them each a card and lets them go.

The porter greets Lucas cheerfully the second they’re into the lobby, but-- like a professional-- modulates his voice down the second he sees Henry’s flinch at the lights and the high decibel cheer.

“Can we get you anything?”

“No, I think we’re set.” Lucas hefts the bag of groceries. “We’ll call room service if anything comes up, thanks.”

The porter’s gaze flicks to the toothbrush peeking out, and then to Henry, and then back to Lucas, and he doesn’t say it but Lucas realizes that it does look like an awful lot like he’s an old lech plying pretty young men with alcohol and whisking them away, doesn’t it? If they only knew.

The elevator ride leaves Henry looking peaky; he staggers into the bathroom but then just sits on the closed toilet, head in his hands. Lucas unwraps the toothbrush and sets out the toothpaste and the Pepto and pain medication and a glass of water and then steps out, closing the door behind him. He quickly changes his shirt-- there’s bile and sweat all over this one-- and then turns his attention to food.

There’s not a hard copy of the room service menu; Lucas pokes around a bit until he remembers to check the little hotel tablet that’s chained to the writing desk like a massive bank pen. Right. He doesn’t travel much; he’s not sure if this is still a sign of an overpriced resort (which it is, no joke) or if it’s standard issue in any decent hotel.

Oh well. Functional, at least. There’s not just a menu but an option to order food straight from the tablet. There’s loaded potato soup-- no-- or egg drop. Yes, actually, fantastic. If Henry can handle that maybe it can get some protein back into him.

In the bathroom he finally hears the water start; Henry’s managed to start moving, poor guy. It doesn’t take him long to clean up and brush his teeth; he comes staggering out by the time Lucas has figured out what he wants for dinner.

“Can I get you anything?”

“You’ve already done too much-- I just need to rest.”

“Pull up some bed,” Lucas agrees. “Let me hang up your jacket, and I’m not going to be offended if you lose your pants.”

Henry’s so drained he doesn’t argue; he slips out of his jacket and hands it over, then just drags the light duvet back off of the big king bed and cocoons himself in the sheets. He looks exhausted. And that's got to be at least as rough as he feels, pale and drawn under his tan and multi-day stubble. Aw, damn, he’d meant to pick up a razor. Oh well, later.

“Mind if I check you over?”

“If you like, but I’m past the worst,” Henry says into the pillow, but obligingly rolls enough to make eye contact when Lucas walks over.

“Yeah, it’s all over once you get past the blackout drunk.” He holds up a finger, and Henry tracks it as he waves it slowly back and forth. Good. “I mean sure, liver damage, potentially complete failure, but that’s nothing to write home about.”

“There are worse deaths.” Henry's tone lands somewhere between resigned and cynical-- probably where the Venn diagram circles overlap at 'hungover'.

Lucas holds out his hands and gestures with his fingers, glancing pointedly at where Henry’s arms would be if he could see them through the sheets. Henry wriggles an arm out of his cocoon for Lucas to hold and turn until he can get his fingers against Henry's wrist and find his pulse. Henry glances away, gazing over and out the big balcony window that frames a desktop-perfect shot of deep blue ocean and the swaying palm trees lining the beach. The afternoon is closing into evening, the sun heavy with light; it catches the red and gold in Henry’s hair and lashes, and brushes long shadows across his cheeks when he blinks. How many times has Henry died? To die in your thirties was a tragedy; to keep dying, to stay trapped--  done. 62 beats of his pulse, 14 breaths. Perfectly normal for an adult male at rest. He probably isn’t going to die on Lucas tonight, at least.

He lets go of Henry’s arm. “How dramatic are you being right now?”

"I admit, I haven't actually died of catastrophic organ failure. At least, it hasn't been the sole cause of death; there were other factors. The arsenic, that once. It's been a feature of most of my poisonings, come to think of it."

 _And you, what, Harkness yourself back to life? Time rewinds, injuries heal, big gasp, eyes open?_ Lucas thinks it but doesn't ask, and Henry squints at him, looking a bit sad.

"Fifteen years ago you would have been brimming over with questions," Henry says, a little wistfully. "It's always a shock, seeing what time does to people when one isn't looking."

"Especially in your case, right? If it helps, I still am brimming over with questions."

"Fifteen years ago I don't think you could have stopped yourself from asking them. Pardon me."

"Nah, you're right." Lucas's eyes crinkle. "But I would have felt bad as soon as I asked. I learned to put a five second delay on my brain-to-mouth processing, that's all."

"That's hardly 'all', Chief Medical Examiner Wahl." Henry looks almost proud of him, through the bleary weepiness. Aw, Henry. "But by all means. Ask your questions," he adds after a second of woolgathering. "I told you there's no more point pretending. And it's a welcome distraction."

"Okay." Lucas pulls the desk chair over next to the bed and sits down. "So. You die. And... then you're not dead. How's that work?"

"My body vanishes. Rather... suddenly, I'm told. Not something I'm aware of. Then I'm simply... back. Alive. Always in water. Recovered. My clothes, unfortunately, never seem to survive the process."

"The skinny dipping?" Lucas says, and it may sound like a question but it really isn't. It just comes to him: his subconscious must be rolling around this new knowledge in his head, filling in more gaps. "Wait. Every time you went freeform in the river?"

Henry rolls his head in a tired nod, and shuts his eyes.

"Doc," Lucas scolds, low volume. "Would it kill you to be more careful? Ironic wordplay unintentional, sorry. I can think of at least five incidents between 2010 and 2015 alone."

"Not voluntary, I promise you," Henry murmurs, eyes still shut. "And there were more. Some, I admit, were the result of carelessness. Others-- I had a stalker, at one point."

"Christ. I remember. He killed you?"

"Several times. He was like me; afflicted with immortality."

"That's question number five on my list. Glad we got there."

"Are there others? Yes. Yes. I didn't know until he contacted me in 2014. I didn't believe him, at first. But then I did. There's... another, which is hardly my story to tell. Older even than my stalker. He intervened, in the end, after the situation reached its worst point. Not a proud time. But Adam... was responsible for three of my deaths first hand, and I believe two or three others. He also sent the man who attacked me."

Lucas gusts out a sigh, shaking his head. "Henry... I can guess why you weren't exactly in a rush to tell the police this, but. You really should have let someone help."

"My experiences with confiding in others are... mixed. Extremely. Mixed. Long story."

"Well, yeah, seems that way. I don't even know where to start asking the rest of my questions. I can’t imagine what you’ve experienced."

"I could begin my story any time in the past two hundred and fifty years," Henry sighs. "But I imagine you don't want to hear all of that."

Two hundred and fifty. Well that's question two taken care off, too. The back of his head starts to spin, his subconscious is basically doing cartwheels and changing omg omg. He can't even-- but he has to, because Henry is lying right there, looking like he's just gone 15 rounds with the universe and lost. "Totally do," Lucas tells him fondly. It's almost like old times, Henry surprising him and tantalizing him with secrets, but that's a good thing. "But not right now, maybe. ...Do you want to talk about Abe?"

"I don't... yes. No. I don't know."

"Leave it. No hurry," Lucas soothes. "Let that Pepto kick in, maybe try to sleep some?"

Henry shifts in the big bed, sighing. "I'm exhausted, but not very tired, unfortunately."

"Want the TV on?"

"No, thank you. Usually when I travel I bring a book."

"Raar, you adorable dinosaur."

Henry opens his eyes to frown at him. Grump grump grump. Like an angry puppy, one of the wrinkly ones. Lucas honestly can't tell if he looks younger than he used to, or if it's just Lucas’s perspective that's changed, because mid-thirties looks a lot different from the other side.

"I'm going to get that soup going from room service, all right? Egg drop okay? It reheats well, so don't worry if you actually drop off."

"Thank you," Henry says, and shuts his eyes. Lucas places the order through the touch interface on the writing desk, and then settles down with his laptop to write. 'Lamprey horror mermaids of New York' popped into his head full blown on the walk back, and along with that was a new inspiration on confirming time of death on waterlogged bodies. He starts the outline of the research he’ll need to do first, bracketing in notes to re-read the follow up studies from Texas State on carrion birds and corpse dating.

Room service knocks; Henry winces and turns, curling in on himself. Lucas wordlessly tips the server and tucks the bowl of soup and his own huge plate of fried rice into the fridge for later, stopping to pull a sheet over Henry’s lower body before he settles back in at the desk.

There’s a light breeze coming in as night falls-- and boy, it doesn’t just fall here, it plummets. Lucas looks up as the wind stirs the curtains and thinks at first it might be later than he thought, but a quick look at his laptop clock confirms his initial thought. It’s only six. It just got dark fast.

Henry’s a shadowy heap on the bed, but Lucas can hear his shallow, regular breathing even if he can’t see it, so he decides to give Henry’s hangover a break and leave the lights off. The keyboard is one of those hermetically sealed jobs with little round bumps to indicate key positions, which is weird for the old fogies like Lucas who grew up with keyboards that went click click, but it’s backlit so he’ll be fine without a light.

The outline flows out of him; it’s calm here, Henry’s breathing and the faint salty-floral-campfire breeze, the raindrop patter of his own fingers on the keyboard. He falls into a trance, his mind’s eye waltzing through a background of micro and macrofauna indigenous to the East River, variances in salinity, and the temperature differentials he’ll have to look up--

He sits back, fingers steepled under his nose, while he considers how big the scope of his research is going to be, because he’s only coming up with more variables the longer he thinks about it.

“...What time is it?”

“Ah.” He blinks, looks at the clock again, then over at Henry who's sitting up in the bed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “Eight. You ready for that soup?”

“Yes, but don’t trouble yourself. I think my legs may be functioning again.” Light fills the room as Henry switches on the bedside lamp, rolling gingerly out of bed and testing his ability to stand up. “When I woke up, I didn’t immediately recall where I was. I didn’t recognize you for a moment, until you spoke.”

“It’s all over when I open my big mouth, huh?” Lucas shoots him a smile.

“It’s a relief, rather. Uch.” That last comment is obviously directed at whatever he tasted when he ran his tongue over his teeth just now.

"Go grab a shower or whatever you need," Lucas says, his fingers automatically tapping the keyboard shortcut to save his work to the actual laptop and sync it to his phone. It's a habit he's never lost, and hasn't tried to-- he doesn't care how good the promises are that his changes are uploaded real-time, he’s had a lifetime of computer crashes and bad updates to hone his digital survival skills, no matter how unnecessary his niece insists all the duplication is. "I'll get the food ready."

"No, no, keep working." He can see Henry's focus coming back, his gaze flicking down to Lucas's computer. "I can heat the food up-- if you don't mind waiting until I've showered."

"Okay, yeah, thanks. I'm good until whenever." He shrugs. "My stomach has no idea what time it is anyway."

Which is true. It's hard to believe that he's only just closing in on 24 hours here. He's missing the opening screenings, actually, they just started, but really he doesn't mind. He's seen all the openers before; they don't run the premiers until the second day, generally, and his own oldie isn't up until the IndieHouse Classics anniversary marathon starts tomorrow night.

He hears the shower start, and taps out enough to finish the outline structure for the chapter he's on-- kind of a theoretical one, but a good place to take the paper, he's pretty excited about it-- and it's nice, it's like working in the nights or on the weekend when Erin's home. Just. Different.

He stops when he’s done, scrolling back up through the doc before he saves it again. It’s good. It will be good. It might be great, actually, and it’s been a while since he’s published anything. He likes this. He gives himself a mental gold star and stands, stretching out the cramp that’s started in his back. Oh yeah, he has definitely been sitting there for a few hours.

But-- a quick glance at the time, Henry should be done in the shower soon. Time to eat and... go from there.

There are housecoats in the closet, not that bad for hotel quality, actually, and he cracks the bathroom door just enough to leave one and a pair of sweats and a tshirt on the counter, steam sneaking out when he shuts the door.

There’s laundry down the hall, and if Henry’s suit can be washed they can toss it in and have it dry by morning.

He’s pretty sure the humidity level in the whole suite goes up by 30 per cent when Henry comes out of the shower with a steam cloud that makes the little one Lucas let out earlier look like nothing. He looks clean, though, refreshed despite what has to still be a pounding head, skin red and shining and his hair a wet mane of curls when he stops towelling it. It’s longer than it was before, almost two decades ago god that’s such a long time, and whatever he used to do to tame it apparently washes out, because Lucas is seeing serious promises of puffball.

Between the hair and the sweats and Lucas’s old Brains, They Do A Reanimated Body Good zombie shirt, Henry looks so young that the flashing alarm in the back of Lucas’s head that’s been going Immortal! Immortal! Immortal! shuts off for a second.

“Thank you,” Henry says, and gestures at the clothes. “You’ve really done too much, but I greatly appreciate it.” Something must turn over in his brain, because his face crumples for a half a heartbeat, before he bears up with a solid, set expression that wouldn’t fool anyone. He’d never been good at secrets. Having, them yes. Stopping anyone from knowing he had them on the other hand--

Something turns over in Lucas’s brain too. “Y. pestis!”

Henry winces, and Lucas drops his volume back to an inside voice level. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry. But. That blood, the shipping container, that was your stalker?”

Henry knows what he’s talking about immediately, looks down like that might stop his entire face from broadcasting Panic Panic Five Alarm Fire That I Feel Really Bad About Panic bells.

“Oh my god, Doc. That sample was something like 2000 years old.”

Henry grimaces, nodding, and busies himself with turning and grabbing what must be his own clothes from the bathroom, heavy with water. “Yes. Adam. Is an old immortal.”

A really horrible thought occurs to him just then, shoving ‘oh my god oh my god 2000 years old? Henry is a baby immortal oh my god d’aaaw’ right out of the frame.

How did you ask someone if they were ever tortured to death by their immortal stalker?

Henry must still be able to read his face as well as he ever could, because he saves Lucas the struggle with a quick: “No. No, not me. Adam was always... expedient.”

Well that’s almost a relief.

It feels like his brain is one of those 3D puzzle games that had been so popular in the ‘20s, because it’s like he found the right pattern and unexpected pieces are sliding into place. “The pugio,” he says slowly. “That was about 2000 years old too.” And almost at the same time. That had been such a busy year, so many odd, one-off cases falling one after another.

Henry nods sharply, excusing himself past Lucas and heading for the balcony. He drapes his suit, definitely wet, he must have hand-washed it, about the patio furniture, and heads for the kitchen. He opens the fridge, and Lucas turns all his years of experience into pure will and keeps the ten million questions that are trapped inside from spilling out.

Henry fetches a pair of plates from the cupboard, finally saying: “The pugio, that was Adam, as well. The pugio was-- is-- connected to him. He was trying to retrieve it. It wasn’t a good time.”

He couldn’t have indicated ‘This Is An Understatement’ any more clearly if he had bolded it, underlined it in red, and made it flash. Lucas keeps his mouth shut and files that away, along with about another new million questions. It was the only time he’d ever checked out evidence knowing it was going to walk away. That tended to stick with a guy. And they’d never arrested anyone in the murder of that poor lady from the history museum, or the guy who’d been trying to sell the stolen pugio. He’d been, well. Young. God, he’d been young. And he’d believed in Henry, really believed in him to a degree he would find beyond concerning in any of his team now. But, well. Henry had been Henry. Mysterious and brilliant and charming and super creepy in a way that had slipped past critical thought and hit him right where he lived.

And you know. Apparently immortal. Which, yeah. Wow.

Henry’s found a little saucepan and a frying pan, and has taken over the tiny hotel suite stove, because he’s actually heating up their food the old fashioned way.

“You know there’s a microwave right above your head,” Lucas says. “You don’t have to go to all that trouble.”

The look Henry turns on him is like taking a step back and landing twenty five years in the past. He must show it in his expression, because Henry’s look softens, and he looks a little guilty for a second.

“Pardon me,” he says. “No, no, I will admit that microwave ovens have progressed by leaps and bounds since their introduction, but if you can think of a quicker way to ruin a perfectly good plate of food, I’d love to hear it.”

And that’s that, then. Lucas doesn’t bother to hide his smile, and busies himself finding two full sets of cutlery in the drawers and getting them both some water and leaving it all on the breakfast ledge. The glasses are a mish mash of sets, and come in Super Big Gulp and half a sip thanks sizes. He goes with the giant ones; Henry could probably do with some extra hydration anyway.

Lucas grabs the few minutes left when he’s done to slide back in at the writing desk and check his email-- a few schedule reminders from the con, a one liner check in from Erin who’s gone to bed after a marathon meeting in Chicago and hopes he’s seeing lots of blood and guts, no work emergencies or anything. He closes the email and his doc pops back up-- right, hadn’t he almost had a thought a few minutes ago? Something about temperature variations....

Henry leans over his shoulder as he sets the plate of rice down and Lucas’s cutlery at his elbow, reading over the screen. 

“I thought this was a vacation,” Henry says. “I had assumed you’d be working on something enjoyable.”

“This is enjoyable,” Lucas protests. “Do you realize it’s been almost thirty years and nobody’s done the full Pasadena body-farm treatment in an aquatic environment?”

“Good god, haven’t they?” Henry perches on the desk, just his hip against the surface. “Well-- it would be a large study. The confounding variables--”

“Especially in an estuary environment, but if some consistent markers could be pinned down based on salinity exposure--”

“Then you could potentially confirm both time and location of death. Just narrowing down body entry location could shave weeks off of investigations.” Henry gives him a lopsided smile. “Lucas. This is wonderful.”

“Want to co-author?”

Henry shifts his weight, sliding off the desk and taking a few steps away to stare out at the sea beyond the balcony. “I can’t. It’s been too long--”

“It’s been fifteen years. That’s not a huge percentage of your lifetime,” Lucas points out.

“I’m known as a cosmetic surgeon, now. It would raise too many questions.”

“Okay, that’s true. But … is this sustainable, trying to identity hop? Maybe back in the horse drawn carriage days, but Doc....”

“I’ll deal with that crisis when it arises.”

“But maybe there’s a way to have it not be a crisis.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

Henry turns and retreats back to the kitchen, conversation clearly over, and rummages in the cupboards until he finds a bowl. Lucas doesn’t start in on a lecture on the global surveillance state and synchronized international ID recognition, or the fact that Henry apparently is still going by Henry Morgan and Doc, come on. But... well. He’s still going to think it.

It’s a nice dinner, actually. The rice is good, a little coconutty which is unexpected but absolutely perfect, because hello, Hawai’i, and after a first few hesitant bites Henry attacks his soup, finishing it off and then the last half a cup of Lucas’s rice from the pan when Lucas insists.

“Would you like to hear about Abraham?” Henry asks, sounding casual but staring into his empty soup bowl as if it may kill him if he doesn’t focus hard enough on it.

Lucas would like to hear about Abraham. But much more importantly, Henry wants to talk.

“Yeah,” he says, and closes his laptop, swiveling the desk chair so he’s looking at Henry.

“When I first saw him, it was in the last days of the second world war. I was with a medical division in Poland. We had arrived at the liberation of one of the camps. It was... truly, one of the worst sights of human evil I have ever witnessed. It was April, the Nazi forces were retreating, leaving Europe and the camps and the surviving prisoners in ruins behind them.” Henry runs his thumb over his soup bowl. “Abraham’s story must have been an odd one even before I entered it; there shouldn’t have been an infant at that camp. How he got there, how he survived, especially after his parents were… Well. There was no-one left who could care for him. And yet there he was, small and alive and so vibrant and unscathed among the horror. Like a little miracle.”

Henry chuckles sadly. “I knew the nurse he was handed to-- an exhausted older man had been sheltering him, but he barely had the strength to walk into her surgery, let alone care for a child indefinitely. She searched the survivors like a madwoman to find any living relatives, any information about the child. Only after she had come to the grim conclusion that he had no family left even to name him did she resolve to keep him. ...Abigail was a woman of great resolve.

“She approached me, baby in her arms, and told me very frankly that he had nobody left. That unless someone was willing to look after him, he would join the ranks of all the other forgotten war orphans.

“I was fond of Abigail. Too fond: I had resolved to keep her at arm’s length, told myself I was too old, too tired to risk sharing my life and my secret all over again. I might have had the strength to resist her, in the end. Perhaps. Likely not. But this-- ” Henry’s smiling. It looks like it hurts. “He was too young to focus; he looked bewildered but unafraid, staring around him, trying to look at everything. I couldn’t look at anything but him. The idea of abandoning him after that was… ludicrous.”

Lucas makes an involuntary sound, sort of a ‘naw’, the kind he usually reserves for baby hippo videos and seeing toddlers play with giant super-gentle dogs. Henry’s suspicion has melted into parental adoration and that’s so sweet and so sad.

He starts crying again, not seeming to notice as he tells Lucas the story--the bright kid warm and creative despite all the cloak and dagger stuff that had uprooted his life. Henry’s secret had meant that the family moved around like a military family, but they’d managed a to carry a Rockwell domesticity around with them because Henry and Abe’s mom had loved him so much, and each other so much, although when Henry talks about her it’s with the tone of someone taking a break from opening a fresh wound just to poke at an old painful scar.

Henry makes a roughly chronological journey from 1945 to the present, but he detours from time to time. Something about the day Abe’s draft letter came reminds him about how baby-Abe had been colicky for half of the boat trip from England to America, leads somehow to Abe as a young baseball fan dragging his parents to the park as often as they could stand it, jumps back forward to Abe showing up to drag his dad out of the bottle when Henry’s wife disappeared, which leads to a story Lucas can actually contribute to, because Lucas was there when Abe tracked down the last known location of his mom.

Wow, ‘don’t tell Henry’ makes a lot of sense now, seeing the state Henry’s in. His eyes are red and a little dried out from crying, and the hangover may have blown over but Henry still looks somehow like he’s been hit by a bus. An emotional bus.

But most of the stories are happy, despite it all. Abe had been a pretty wild kid, who knew? He’d never realized what a life the old antique salesman had had and then there’s all the parts tangled up in Henry’s immortality. Even the parts that aren’t are pretty intense-- the guy’s ex-wife (twice) apparently almost killed him? Henry paints a picture of a brave, clever, sweet boy, and wow he still sounds like a dad getting choked up about his kid going off to college.

He always had. There just wasn’t context and Lucas had never quite put it together. Now the words are rushing out, all the things Henry couldn’t say to anyone spilling out of him. Lucas listens, aching for the guy, because yeah wow no, he’s heartbroken and immortality isn’t fair at all.

It’s officially past ‘late night’ and into ‘morning’ before Henry runs out of stories, voice fond and sleepy as he explains how Abe met the kid who’d eventually take over the store. It’s sort of a cringe-worthy first meeting, but Abe obviously recovered from foot in mouth syndrome because he and Jake wound up buddies, and it’s Jake who bought out the store when Abe and Henry headed out to LA.

“He’s taking care of it,” Lucas offers. “I drop by, sometimes. It’s not the same but he obviously loves the place. He kept the name Abe’s Antiques and everything. ...does he know? About Abe?”

“Yes. I called him, on the day. I’m afraid I got rather short with him,” Henry admits. “I didn’t call again.”

“You should get back in touch; he was Abe’s friend too--” A jaw-cracking yawn sneaks up on him and cuts him off in the middle of his thought. “Crap. Sorry.”

“Good lord.” Henry stifles his own sympathetic yawn. “Oh, it’s four in the morning. I’m so--”

“Nope, no apologies, this was totally fine,” Lucas says sternly. ..or it would be stern except it comes out garbled and wrapped around another yawn.

“You should get some sleep. So should I, for that matter.”

They hash over sleeping arrangements-- the sofa’s too short for either of them, but neither of them is a kicker, clinger, or snorer, and the king-size is massive. Henry stays awake just long enough to clear up the long-forgotten dishes, very valiantly, and then climbs into the bed, rolls over, and drops off instantly.

It looks like a great idea, but Lucas makes himself wait a little longer. He climbs into sleep clothes and does a few stretches to unlock the muscles that he tweaked on his walk today. Well, yesterday, now, but all the hours sitting in a desk chair between then and now aren’t exactly helping the stiffness.

Then he climbs into bed, with a last look at Henry to make sure he’s doing okay, and starts to drift off fast. The blinking light in his brain - Immortal! Immortal! combines with the stories about Abe and unspools a classic-Burton styled film on the back of his closed eyelids. ‘Mummy and Mummy,’ he decides incoherently. Henry in bandages. Abigail looks sort of like Rockwell’s Rosie. Adorable Leave it to Beaver Abe, moving around in a claymation suburbia until his consciousness finally fades away.

  


The sun is high in the sky when Lucas wakes up, golden bright through palm tree leaves through the window, and it takes him about a half a second to remember he’s in Hawai’i (aah he’s in Hawai’i!) and that it’s the IndieHouse fest (yay!) and then another half a second to realize there’s someone in bed with him, blocking the bottom half of the window.

His brain speeds through a half-awake The Floor Is Lava scramble, jumping from thought to thought. Erin, no, Erin’s in Chicago-- had he picked someone up at the premier-- no he didn’t go-- because Henry-- oh my god Henry’s immortal-- Abe was dead, Henry was a mess-- wait go back oh my god Henry’s immortal?

“Good morning,” Henry says, his voice cracking with sleep.

Right. It’s Henry.

Who’s immortal. And wow.

“Morning,” Lucas says blearily, and rolls over so his feet can hit the floor when he sits up. He pats at his hair, trying to settle it down where it always crowns up around the balding spot at the back. Ooh yeah, it’s morning.

He stumbles up and over to the sink for a drink-- his brain is slowly putting the late, late night back into order, and it feels strange to be so weightless with his own and secondhand grief on a such a beautiful morning.

Henry opens the balcony, filling the room with fresh floral breeze and the sea, and wow, it’s gorgeous. It’s just. Gorgeous.

Lucas shakes his head and gets moving. He asks Henry if he’d like the shower first, but Henry says no, is busy examining his clothes out on the balcony, and by the time Lucas has scrubbed off most of the late night and is feeling human again, Henry’s dressed in his linen suit, Lucas’s clothes are folded neatly on the made bed, and there’s a hot pot of coffee ready and the pineapple Lucas had picked up on his drive in from the airport is sliced and chopped into pieces.

It is going to be a great day.

The pineapple is so, so good. Wow, it’s really good. He’s always loved pineapple, and tells Henry so as soon as he can stop shoving pieces into his mouth long enough to talk.

Henry nods. “And you made a fine selection, this one is almost perfect. Not to mention, Maui Gold pineapples are 30% less acidic than most types. So you can eat 30% more before making yourself quite as sick,” he adds, wryly, and Lucas shrugs and takes another slice.

It turns out Henry’s been to Hawai'i before, although only a few times. Once way back at the turn of the last century, which put the restlessness Lucas had felt on the five hour flight from New York to shame, again for a few years in the 1930s, and then again in the in 1970s. Which makes it almost a hundred years since he’d been there and wow, Lucas is going to need another cup of coffee each time he realizes just how long two hundred and fifty years is.

“Abraham's first honeymoon was here,” Henry adds. “He’d loved it. He lived in San Francisco at the time, it wasn’t so far. He wanted.” He swallows, and Lucas can see the centring breath he takes, how hard he works to keep himself from tearing up too much. “He wanted me to spread his ashes here. Said he’d always wanted a beachfront address. I have to-- I should do that soon.”

“Do you want company?”

Henry shakes his head. “No, no, thank you. That’s very generous, but. No, I’ll do this alone.”

“Well,” he says, “if you change your mind, or need a car. I’ve got a rental, and am just going to be bumming around.” He’d wanted to go snorkeling, this beach is supposed to be amazing for it, but he’d slept well past the best hours, so he’ll probably just head down to the beach for a swim and wander around the shopping complex near the resort before heading over to the convention rooms before his screening tonight. He’s still got his list of places to see, but this is only day two. There’s lots of time.

His phone, charging on the bedside table, goes off; once, twice. Texts.

Well, he’s gotten lazy in his old age and he’s got a good view of the TV from here.

“iPhone, pair and show,” he says, lifting his voice. This TV would have to be a lot older than it was not to be bluetooth remote enabled.

Henry gives him an indulgent look-- ‘you kids and your gadgets’, it says, adorably, and then glances at the tv as it springs to life, displaying clear old-man approved white sans serif text on a dark gray background, popping a picture of his buddy Constance’s face up in the right hand corner.

`I missed you last night at the mixer` it says, and then just below that:

`Are you okay?`

“Lady friend?” Henry murmurs.

“Friend lady,” Lucas corrects him. Not that he and Erin are particularly exclusive-- no, that relationship has been more ‘best friends’ and less ‘with benefits’ for at least a decade-- but Constance is a decade and a half younger and they just like to geek out about horror meta-narratives.

Henry smiles, as Lucas lifts his voice again to say:

“iPhone respond: ‘I’m cool exclamation point; I ran into an old friend at the beach period. Sorry I missed you, icon-5’.”

Yes he knows that the voice recognition has gotten much better at inflection, but he’s a grumpy old man and he’d rather shout his punctuation. The phone-- and by extension, the TV-- spools out his message complete with abashed emoji.

“Send,” he says, nodding firmly. Then he glances at Henry, smiling wryly. “Too much newfangled technology?”

“Lucas, the colour television was ‘too much newfangled technology.’ I’m quite used to it.”

They chuckle together.

The phone buzzes again, and the TV pings, as a new message pops on-screen.

`Are you coming to your showing tonight?`

“iPhone respond: ‘Probably not comma I’m still catching up with my buddy and he doesn’t do horror, icon-17.” That’s the classic ‘what can you do’ shrug, complete with katakana eyes-and-mouth. Henry snorts when he sees it, and Lucas checks for typos (there are almost never typos in this generation of the software but he checks anyway) and sends that one, too.

“Lucas, I hope I’m not keeping you from anything,” Henry says, giving Lucas a fond smile.

“Eh, just a showing of one of my older films. It’s a decade old, they’re just running it to pad things out.” He raises a finger, remembering that Henry needs context. “I’m here for an indie horror film fest. I’m not a big part of it; I haven’t made anything new in a couple years, but us old day-jobbers help pay the convention fees so that the struggling artists don’t have to.”

“Ah! I remember your interest in film. I had no idea you’d produced them. What time is the showing?”

“Eight, but--”

“I’d be delighted to go,” Henry says, and there’s that big heart he remembers so well between the hyperventilating and the secrets.

Lucas beams at him, a smile he hopes is avuncular-not-creepy, and yeah, it’s probably good there’s no one around to see it who doesn’t know that Henry is actually five times his age. “It’s really not your thing. Schlocky horror, corn syrup blood. A love letter to Troma and to my days as an assistant ME.”

“I’m sure I could stand it.”

Lucas pauses, a connection firing in his brain: this year he’s showing Haekel and Jive; he submitted it for the list as an afterthought, hadn’t thought much about it in years. He’d almost forgotten how telling it is.

“It’s also kind of a love letter to my mysterious older mentor,” he says, shaking his head and smiling at himself. “Are you sure-?”

“Oh, now I absolutely must see it.”

“All right,” he laughs. “If you’re sure.”

“I have a difficult day ahead of me. Anything will be a welcome distraction.”

Lucas reaches out and pats Henry on the shoulder. He gets the feeling that Henry doesn’t get enough shoulder-pats slash miscellaneous incidental contact, because Henry makes this tiny relieved look every time Lucas does it.

He’s starting to worry about Henry. Kind of a lot.

“Meet you at seven thirty?” he offers, and Henry nods.

He gives Lucas a reciprocal shoulder-thump-and-grip on his way out, and Lucas feels the years and some of his age blurring out of focus.

Immortal.

Well.

Sooner or later he’ll get over that?

Probably later.

He gets his lazy butt across the room to grab the phone and text Constance and offer her a catch-up lunch. With his fingers, like real texters do.

  
  
  


The IndieHouse festival has taken over about half of the convention rooms in the resort, including both major ballrooms. They’re running the oldies and other off-bill items in the smaller one, right in the junction of the upper lobby and both the major corridors on the convention level, and it’s actually super awesome. They should get it again sometime, it's a great location.

He finds a patch of wall and hangs out, solo-cup in hand, and watches the crowd pass by. It's split evenly between con-goers in costume and con-goers revelling in shorts and flip-flops, which yeah, he's right there with the shorts and sandals too, but there’s nothing better than watching someone try to talk through a mouthful of fake blood.

Constance and her question-mark boyfriend Steve catch him on the way out of the screening before his; they chat a bit, and he nerds out a bit with her about the horror potential in the new morphing algorithms they’re making for her mocap software before he sees Steve’s sweet smile getting extra lost and shoos them out to go walk in nature.

He’s not surprised to see Henry come in on their heels-- not exactly. Henry said he’d be there, and he’s here. He’s mostly glad that Henry looks… okay.

Relatively. As okay as you can look when you’ve been mourning a child, he guesses. He's got a new pair of slacks and shirt on, and he's shaved off the thickest stubble, He glances around at the con-goers skeptically, managing to look above it all instead of completely out of his element. Maybe in another ten years Lucas will pick up that one, too. He waves to Henry, and there’s a visible flash of relief on Henry’s face before he comes strolling casually over.

“Everything go okay?” Lucas asks in an undertone.

Henry nods and says nothing. Lucas doesn’t push, just squeezes his shoulder and nods toward the double doors of the banquet hall that’s been converted into a beer-theater style screening room.

“You are under zero obligation to like this,” Lucas says, as they take their seats.

“Nevertheless. I’ll do my best.”

Henry makes it through the opening credits without batting a lash at the stylings of Men At Work, and through the opening scene of a young man being chased down an alley by a malevolent shadow.

And then the cops show up, one female and oozing hard-line confidence, the other male and a study in New York Cop Drama Cliche, and Henry’s eye twitches.

Then the male cop opens his mouth and Henry swallows around a snort.

“Lucas!” he hisses, looking like he doesn’t know whether to be outraged or laughing.

“With respect,” Lucas protests. “And love. I told you it was inspired by my time as an assistant ME. Including the cops we worked with.”

And it’s true, the cops are characterized with affection and not the butt of most of the jokes in the movie. That honour is reserved for the quote unquote protagonist, a nebishy young assistant ME trying to prove himself to the world and especially the part of the world that was his noble, sexy mentor, Doctor Henry Haekel.

Henry’s eyebrows shoot up, and Lucas shrugs at him. He gave fair warning here.

Then-- oh yeah, he’d forgotten this scene was this early in the flick-- it cuts from Not Hanson grilling hapless young Lawrence to a slow, low, lingering shot of a handsome man in a lab coat and suit. He lifts a vial dramatically in the starkly lit laboratory, takes a swig, and then starts to convulse. But in a sort of sexploitationy way, sagging back against the wall as he flinches and jerks and -- wow that moan sounds more orgasmic than Lucas remembers directing it.

He hides his face in one hand. Oooh this was a bad life choice.

“...Not even the infamous Doctor Jeckyll managed to concoct a potion that applied dark eyeliner,” Henry says dryly, and Lucas giggles into his hand despite himself. “And-- Yes. Yes, it seemed it also somehow changed his trousers. Lucas, even for science fiction....”

“Deliberately overwrought, Henry. Deliberately.”

“Well done, then, I’d say you achieved your objective.”

Lucas half watches the film, trying to remember if he’d left himself any more surprise landmines-- the whole film is a horror/sex romp full of bondagey undertones and sexy menace and inappropriate touching with knives so he knows it’s going to be embarrassing all the way through, but did he have any other transformation scenes quite that explicit?

Henry’s watching with appalled amusement, though, mouth flicking up despite himself through the overtly derivative cop procedural and unsubtle cuts to violent shadowy murders. And then… oh yeah. The nightclub scenes Lucas ripped right out real life and polished up with a little extra fantasy.

"Is this how you saw me?" Henry murmurs, eyes flicking between Lucas and the screen, where the hapless doctor has again transformed into his seductive serial-killer alter ego, complete with the improbable leather pants and a slicked back hairstyle.

"Sort of. Not really," Lucas chuckles back, pitching his voice low. The beer theater style seating means there's a thin table between them and the next row, and everyone can feel less guilty about having conversations. The silhouetted couple making out in the second row, though, are still committing a cinema foul. Take the back, guys. “Sexy and dangerous yes. This is just… all that amped way way up.”

He and Henry are leaning close: he can bump the younger-looking older man's shoulder companionably. "I mean, I had a crush on you, but you knew that."

"I knew," Henry agrees. "You were at least discrete. More discrete than the young woman in blood draw or the receptionist. What was his name-? "

"Drew. Drew was pushy. But yeah, eh. I'd had crushes on professors and advisers before. I knew it wasn't going to fly. I pined a little, wrote a couple drafts of Haekel and Jive, moved on."

Henry's bittersweet little smile is turned into a sort of impressionist study in shadows by a long shot of neon lighting on screen. Very pretty, Lucas needs to remember to roll the image into a shoot. Something meta, characters watching a movie.

"It's not an ability I've mastered, myself, moving on.

Lucas bumps his shoulder again, sympathetically.

 _"You were with that doctor last night,"_ a woman in a skimpy waitress' uniform gasps on screen, clutching at the lab assistant's shirtfront. Jane, she'd been a sweetheart to work with, she had that throaty overdramatic noir thing down. Her voice drips camp and sexploitation as she chews on the scenery. " _He hasn't come back. I need him. I need him to do it again._ "

"What on earth?" Henry mutters. Lucas shakes his head and grins.

" _I need it. I need somebody to-- swab me._ "

"Lucas!" Henry hisses. "Is this entirely based on--"

"Maybe a little. The night left an impression on me, okay?" Lucas whispers back, still grinning. "And this is totally how it went down. You gave that woman a medical fetish. Just handing them out left and right. The medical fetish fairy."

"Rubbish." Henry tugs his shoulders in, looking scandalized.

"I told you it'd be awkward," Lucas reminds him, without an ounce of accusation. "You want to step out?"

"No. No, I'd like to see the rest of your film."

"It's just bad timing, you know? If you'd been at the Florida get-together five years ago I would have been showing _Extremokillya_ instead. It was my zombie flick about parasites that lived in formaldehyde and possessed the dead." He sees Henry not caring and pops a period onto what would otherwise have been a longer explanation, instead of stammering to a stop. Cutting himself off gracefully is a skill he gained with age, and apparently Henry notices, because he's giving him an odd look. Lost. Poor guy. Things just keep changing, don’t they?

" _Doctor Haekel! Where have you been? Where did you get those leather pants?_ "

" _My dear Lawrence, correctness in language is paramount. These are trousers. If you'll simply slide your fingers in here--_ "

" _Oh my god! Oh! Doctor!_ "

" _\--You'll see that I'm not wearing any_ pants."

Henry gives Lucas a betrayed look. "Lucas!"

"Sshh, don't resist the camp."

"This is immensely contrived."

"Isn't it?" Lucas agrees proudly.

" _You aren't Doctor Haekel-! He would never-_ " gasps the lab assistant.

" _My dear, dear Lawrence. I'm much better than your fussy old doctor, with his scruples and his fears and his antisocial tendencies. Call me... **Edward Jive-!** "_

The look on Henry's face is so bemused and grumpy-old-man you-kids-and-your-noise judgmental that Lucas has to bury his face in his hands. Fortunately, the dramatic music sting drowns out his snickering. Even when Henry joins in, helplessly giggling at the long shot of Jive's dramatic face, and they lean on each other and laugh completely inappropriately through the cut to the next scene and the serial murder victim lying in a pool of way too much red corn syrup.

“That’s fives time the amount of blood in the human--”

“Yup,” Lucas chirps, and then they’re off again, laughing hard enough that someone a row down and at least five seats to the left wings a few wadded up napkins at them.

Lucas can see Henry tuning out, uncomfortable with the schlock aesthetic; he distracts him by whispering behind the scenes trivia and in-jokes, keeps him chuckling with the deliberate medical absurdities, all the little one-shot details that only forensics nerds and MEs and ER nurses will recognize as hilariously wrong.

There's no Q&A panel for the oldies, so once the credits roll, Lucas can sneak Henry out and back into the hotel lobby.

"There's a form of immortality I never expected to gain," Henry mutters under his breath, linking his arm with Lucas’s and steering him firmly  towards the hotel restaurant. "It was very competent, though. Quite professionally done."

"You hated it."

Henry purses his lips, casts around for a euphemism, and admits: "I hated it. For no personal reasons, I promise you, it's just that that level of absurdity has never appealed-"

"I get it." Lucas grins. "I guess that immortalization in film would have been redundant anyway."

"It hasn't stopped anyone. At least you didn't saddle me with a cocaine habit."

"...is it story time, Doc?" And then Lucas realizes that a restaurant host is watching them approach, so he cuts off and smiles and holds up two fingers. "Hey, are you guys doing dinner still?"

"Until eleven," the host confirms, and leads them back to a cozy booth. "We also have an all day breakfast selection, and our soups of the day are chicken tortilla and our special egg-drop."

Henry brightens. "All day breakfast? Wonderful."

Ah yes. Big starchy fatty breakfast food after a bender. Lucas nods sagely. He orders a pineapple juice (still not sick of fresh pineapple everywhere, nope), and Henry goes for an orange juice.

Henry leans over the table conspiratorially once the host is gone.

"The rise of breakfast cuisine has been a happy one, I feel. And while I admit I once raised objections-- a full serving of eggs in the later hours makes me feel like a layabout-- I've come to appreciate the all day breakfast menu quite a bit."

He looks extra boyish now, sharing a secret with Lucas, and Lucas feels his eyes crinkling up. He probably looks super avuncular. Or at least he hopes he does, and not super creepy. "Glad to hear that there's some advantages to the brave new world. Speaking of that, except not, cocaine habit?"

"What-? Oh! Yes. It's a bit of an involved story. To make it as short as possible, it was 1882; I was at the university of Edinburgh at the behest of a dear friend of mine, a Doctor Bell. Brilliant man, a pioneer in deductive reasoning and forensic pathology-- a man to whom I owe quite a bit. He was a bit too brilliant, in fact. I'd done my best to disguise how little I had aged in the ten years since I worked next to him, and he nearly figured it out anyway." Henry cocks his head, lost in some memory that makes him smile wryly. The expression is so familiar it jerks Lucas backwards in time-- he always wondered what was going through Henry's head when he got that thousand yard stare, and another little piece clicks into place. He must have an immense amount of experience. Two hundred and fifty years of it, in fact.

Also something is ringing a bell (ha ha pun?) about the scenario.

"He wanted my opinion on an extremely odd poisoning case-- that case alone would take all afternoon to explain. What matters is that Joseph and I-- and a student of his, Doyle-- managed to crack the case together."

"No," Lucas says flatly.

"Yes," Henry says, holding up his hands. "Most of the character was modeled after Bell-- although Joseph never touched cocaine either, that was a figment of the imagination. But some of the inspiration--"

"You're making this up. You were friends with Arthur Conan Doyle."

"I didn't say we were _friends,_ " Henry said darkly. "I think he thought that I was a scoundrel riding Joseph's coattails. Some of Holmes' less flattering habits were direct jabs at me. And I doubt he was imagining Joseph when he had Holmes go over a waterfall."

"That's ridiculous. No, Doc, I believe you, but it's still kind of ridiculous," Lucas says shaking his head. "...Hey, drinks!"

Henry's got flipping on and off the immortal talk down to an art. Sort of a dramatic art, he's almost too innocent as he turns to take his orange juice, but it's polished. Less polished is the moment they realize that they haven't even looked at the menu, and have to flip hurriedly through, muttering apologies.

Henry gets french toast with pineapple and coconut syrup; Lucas goes for catch of the day fish and yam fries, "--and maybe a pineapple cider? Oh, on second thought--"

"It's all right," Henry says, nodding an affirmation at the server.

He heads off with their order, and Henry gives Lucas a reassuring smile. "I don't have the energy to begin another bender. You aren't tempting me into bad habits."

"I hope not," Lucas says.

“History is with me. I never manage to stay at the bottom of a bottle forever, despite my best efforts.”

 _You do this often?_ Lucas’s five second filter activates and he doesn’t say it out loud, thinks it through, and fills in the blanks. Abe had had to pull him out of a bottle, too, when Abigail vanished. And if he takes the death of his friends and family this well after two centuries of practice, how did he react the first time-?

“You’ve done this a couple times, now.”

“A few. Yes.” Henry pauses. “I shouldn’t be telling you most of this.”

“Yeah, but… you should tell somebody. I mean, going through this alone can’t be healthy. Emotionally, not just for your liver.”

‘The alternative is--”

“A lot less unthinkable than you think, Doc. I know. I know you’ve got your reasons, but it’s the twenty-first century and nobody’s going to put you on a dunking chair or anything-”

That makes… something… flash across Henry’s eyes. Lucas was going for witch-hunt imagery, but obviously it rang an unpleasant bell sometime in Henry’s past.

“Okay, bad choice of words, but--”

“I’ve so many falsified records,” Henry murmurs, looking distraught. “I’ve managed to avoid testifying in court, for the most part, but I could be had for perjury, for fraud…”

“I’m not saying go get your birth certificate corrected right away,” Lucas reassures him. “But if you unofficially came out to a few people. Captain Martinez--”

“Jo knows. She knows.” Henry lets out a breath. “We were never as close after that day.”

“You told her and she brushed you off? That doesn’t sound like her,” Lucas says, concerned.

“I didn’t… precisely tell her.”

He tries to keep any judgement from his face-- it’s not like he has any idea how it played out, but yeah, that was a guilty sounding pause if he’d ever heard one. “So… she stumbled onto it and you hadn’t been honest with her and she was your best friend and a capital-c cop and she was hurt and suspicious?”

Henry goes through an amazing range of faces as he tries to argue, huffing and puffing and finally saying: “That’s one way the situation could be characterized.”

Which is yes. Which is absolutely yes.

“I understand,” Henry forges on, as if he has to get to the point before Lucas does. “The distance is as much a result of my handling of the situation as the secret itself. But the fact remains--”

“That it’s been ten years, Henry. Have you talked to her at all?”

No, says Henry’s grumpy puppy face.

“I think you should talk to her. To all of your old buds. We remember you, Henry. If you ever get sick of LA… come back to New York? We won’t turn you over to shady government agents. We care.”

Henry sighs. “It’s a tempting thought. I can’t remain ageless forever, not even in Los Angeles.”

“Though it’s definitely the place for it.”

“It’s been something of an advertisement for my practice, in fact. My patients assume that I ‘have work done’ regularly and know some novel new technique. My occasional attempts to inject age into my appearance are seen as the reverse; a clumsy grey dye job assumed to be a clumsy brown one. But even there, I only have another five years or so before I seem suspicious.”

Lucas nods seriously.

Henry eyes his glass of juice morosely. “Strange, the places people seek immortality. With silicon and saline and stem cells. In cryogenic pods. In fiction. If only they knew it was nothing to aspire to.”

“And that attitude definitely belongs in New York,” Lucas teases him. “Okay, maybe a little upstate, find a pond to write about, but definitely east coast.”

“...A compelling argument.” By which Henry means ‘bullshit’. They grin at each other, conspiratorial.

And then the food’s there, and they focus on eating, with the between-bite side conversation lightening up as the dinner goes on; talk about the islands, about films, about nothing at all in a comfortable, friendly way.

After dinner, Henry gives him an actual hug. And Lucas was the one drinking what little alcohol there was, too.  

He pats Henry’s back gently. Hopefully that’s avuncular too. “Heading out?”

“Back to my cabin. I need to be alone a while, I think. No, don’t worry, I won’t be returning to the bottle.”

“Promise?”

“You have my word.” Henry nods very seriously. “How long do you intend to stay?”

“Oh, I’m here through the sixteenth.”

“Then I’ll see you again.” It looks like it’s a big leap Henry’s taking; like such a simple thing is hard to say. “I won’t leave the islands without saying goodbye.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“Take care of yourself, Lucas.”

He nods seriously, and just as serious, says: “You too.”

The next few days are… well, they’re great, but they feel a little sepia toned against the big bright colours of running into Henry again. A weird injection of sci-fi sfx magic into a normal life, so sudden and profound that he keeps wondering if he dreamed it up.

He doesn’t skip out on the film fest, of course, still hits his creepy tourist destinations and has an absolute blast sharing his thoughts and inspirations with local film-makers at the con, but Henry’s always in the back of his head.

He worries about the guy. Is he still here? Is he really keeping himself off the sauce? Has he skipped out, vanishing like he vanished fifteen years ago?

Then four days in he just shows up in the lobby, holding his bags and looking suntanned and tragic.

“Henry!”

“Hello, Doctor Jackson,” Henry says, one corner of his mouth turning up. He looks better-- he’s eaten regularly, his eyes aren’t puffy and bloodshot. He’s okay, and it’s a huge relief.

“Were you a cosmetic surgeon or a comedian in LA, huh?” Lucas grins. “Did you have a good time?”

“I did. This is a remarkable place. And so much unchanged, less than the mainland cities, at least. Beautiful. I understand why Abraham wanted me to come here.” He looks around him. “A last act of consideration. He worried about me. Even at the end.”

“He loved you,” Lucas says. Yeah, he can see it. Abe worried about what would happen to Henry, putting things in order to give his dad something to do, to distract him. “And he’s going to love the beachfront property, too.”

“I saved some of his ashes,” Henry admits, looking down. “For New York. It felt right. He still has some friends there. And that was Abe’s home, he can be with his mother too.” He doesn’t finish the thought, but Lucas can draw the lines in.

“Would you like some extra help?” he asks. “Organizing a wake or anything, if you want? I’m still in touch with Jake Leung, like I’ve said, and if there are any of Abe’s other friends around. I can take on some of those details.” And it might be easier to do that actually looking like he’s aged in the fifteen years since Abe left New York, instead of Henry trying to do it.

Henry’s eyes do the pound puppy ‘no one has ever loved me before’ melty thing, and Lucas watches him try to convince himself that he’s got it covered and is a rock and an island or whatever despite how he's obviously responding. It feels pretty great when he nods.

“Please. Thank you, that would be very much appreciated.”

His phone starts buzzing in his pocket, and he’s just going to stick his hand in to tap the Ignore code on the screen when it plays the little chime he selected for numbers on the NYPD system and well, damn.

Okay, all things being even, they are not calling to ruin his vacation.

...Although they have to accept his vacation message to call him. And they’re usually pretty good about not bothering people who are away.

Unless it’s an emergency.

“Sorry,” he says. “That’s work. Just a sec.” He pulls out the phone, they still haven’t hung up, damn, and checks the number-- “Oh. It’s Reece.” Yeah he needs to answer.

“Hello, Commissioner?” he says.

And it’s definitely Reece. “Lucas,” she says. “I apologize for interrupting your vacation.” Yup, here it comes. “Are you able to talk?”

“Yeah. Yeah. What’s happened?”

“You remember the body that was found in the river on your last day?”

He does. It takes a second, switching his thoughts over from Henry and Abe and the golden beaches and blue sky, but, “Um, yeah. John Doe, assigned to Herrera.”

Reece manages to lay out an unsolved series of murders and bare facts in a few short sentences, which is probably one of the reasons she has her job. And apparently New York falls apart without him, who knew.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry to cut your vacation short. We’re going to need our best on this.” She does sound sorry, she knows the hours he works just like he knows the hours she works, and they’ve known each other for, well. Twenty-five years. Since she transferred to the NYPD. She’s a kind woman, she really is, and as damn good at her job as anyone he’s ever met, and good to her people and-- yeah. Yeah.

He glances over at Henry, who must be thinking along the same lines he is, by the way his hands are tucked neatly behind his back and his lips are pressed just ever so much harder together than usual. He nods, just barely.

Lucas pauses. “I might have a specialist consultant who could help out on this one. I ran into him a few days ago. It would take some string pulling, but he actually is the best.”

“Oh? Does this mystery consultant have a name?”

Lucas turns to Henry, asking silently if he’s up for this.

Henry takes a deep breath, another, like he’s standing at the edge of a cliff and wondering how deep the water below him is. And then he nods again.

Lucas passes him the phone.

“Commissioner Reece? This is Doctor Henry Morgan. Doctor Wahl said that the NYPD might need a consult on a case-?”

Lucas can’t hear the reply, not even the tone of the voice, but by the sheepish smile on Henry’s face he’s going to guess pleasantly surprised and a little sharp about Henry’s lack of contact.

“Granted, Commissioner,” he says, after she’s said her piece. “We have a great deal to talk about; most of it not over the phone, I think. But Doctor Wahl is correct; I’ll be in town if my services could be of use. And may I give my belated congratulations on your position? It could hardly have gone to a better officer. ... ha, indeed,” he adds, in response to something cynical from the other end.

He’s starting to relax; Lucas wonders if he’s noticed the difference. He was wound up like a spring motor a minute ago, and now his shoulders are un-turtling and he doesn’t look like the phone is going to bite him anymore.

“I’m not sure how long my stay in New York will be. Several weeks at least. I have a good deal to arrange. Yes, regardless of my eligibility for contract work, I would be delighted to see you again.” He takes a deep breath. “I have something of an overdue explanation for you, in fact. Regarding the murder of Captain Koenig, and my somewhat obsessive interest in the fate of the Empress of Africa and in the stolen pugio from the history museum. ...mm? Yes, I realize the cases weren’t related. However… they were both related to me.”

He glances at Lucas, gives him a small, worried smile. Lucas gets it. Telling Lucas-- who’s still a little eccentric, who used to be Henry’s junior colleague, that was a huge step. And if Lucas was a huge step, Reece is like a pole vault, here. She’s asking a question, something, on the other end of the line, and Lucas reaches out as if he can communicate through interpretive dance. Lo a raised hand, palm out, it means ‘you don’t have to do this all at once.’

But Henry’s face is clear-- lined, tired, but clear-- and his voice is steady as he says: “Well, it’s a long story.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, the third immortal is personal fanon. Basically he stepped in post-series to separate Adam and Henry like squabbling kids because they definitely needed to be sent to different corners of the room.


End file.
